


1950

by moon_custafer



Series: The Bureaucracy of the Otherworld Was Surprisingly Generous When It Came to Transportation [2]
Category: Dr. Mabuse (Movies), Norse Religion & Lore, Orphée | Orpheus (1950)
Genre: Afterlife, Bureaucracy, Gen, Paris is where good Americans go when they die, Stakeout, drawing a sword in a cafe is a bad idea, everyone in Valhalla has PTSD, nested flashbacks, period-typical smoking, so far they're just drinking coffee, this was during the absinthe ban
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-20
Updated: 2018-06-09
Packaged: 2019-04-25 13:28:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 9,208
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14379612
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moon_custafer/pseuds/moon_custafer
Summary: “The employees set the tone of the Department. Now, you and your colleagues,” the Frenchman continued, taking out a cigarette, “all died in battle, and your outlook might be called sanguine. We, on the other hand, are a melancholy organization, being staffed entirely by suicides.”





	1. Chapter 1

"As always,” said the young Frenchman, “it’s a question of staffing.” 

“Hm?” asked Lohmann, who’d been keeping an eye on the door of the building opposite, and trying not to let himself be distracted by curiosity about the agents of the other Department with whom he’d crossed paths. 

“The employees set the tone of the Department. Now, you and your colleagues,” the Frenchman continued, taking out a cigarette, “all died in battle, and your outlook might be called sanguine. We, on the other hand, are a melancholy organization, being staffed entirely by suicides.”  _Or perhaps,_ Lohmann thought, _it’s because you’re sent to bother harmless poets while we get to hunt truly evil souls, the kind who are even more dangerous dead than alive._ Out loud he said: 

“Well, suicide is a kind of battle, isn’t it?” 

The young Frenchman looked down at the table, but he smiled at that. Lohmann was beginning to like the fellow. At least he was more approachable than... the other one. 

“In any case, Heurtebise my lad,” he added to the chauffeur, “I wouldn’t be too impressed with my credentials. My current employer’s definition of “fallen in battle” is broad enough to include being caught off-guard by a two-bit thug.”    


They were sitting in a cafe, visible but unnoticed — well, mostly unnoticed; a few minutes earlier, Lohmann had felt a passerby’s glance light on him, and had looked up into the embarrassed face of a youth who’d been staring at the Inspector’s spats. In theory he could take any appearance, but being possessed of a remorselessly accurate memory, and preferring to devote his concentration to the case at hand, he invariably found himself wearing the suit he’d purchased in 1929 and the body that went with it (give or take a few years). Still, it had seemed a little unfair, given that he was sharing a table with a man in a chauffeur’s uniform.    


The bureaucracy of the Otherworld appeared to be surprisingly generous when it came to transportation, but perhaps the Princess didn’t know how to drive an auto, either. Lohmann was not about to try guessing at  _ her  _ true age; though there was something about her that reminded him of Attic statuary, or the bust of Nefertiti he’d seen years ago in the museum in Berlin. 

There was still no sign of movement in the building across the way, so he decided to risk giving a little attention to his coffee; as usual, he’d waited too long, and the drink had gone cold. He grimaced and set the cup and saucer back down; they were, after all, only a prop to justify his presence at this table. Heurtebise, with a sympathetic look, gestured to the waiter and ordered two more coffees. 

“I wonder if your angel’s having any better luck at the Poets’ Cafe,” he said, when the waiter had gone. 

“She’s a valkyrie, not an angel; and she’s certainly not  mine-- ” Lohmann began, when two more mortals crowded into the cafe and immediately attempted to flag the waiter’s attention. Lohmann was not at first sure why they drew his as well, except that they looked like American tourists, and this was not a famous or picturesque locale, but just a quiet street. Then also, he recognized something in their manner — the too-talkative one and the silent, blank-faced one who kept checking his wrist-watch. 

“One moment, gentlemen, please,” said the waiter to the newcomers. He refilled Lohmann‘s and Heurtebise’s cups, then showed the Americans to a table nearby. Lohmann slouched slightly in his chair, lowered his eyelids, and generally tried to look as much as possible like a placid yellow bull as he watched the young men across the rim of his coffee-cup. He’d never quite had a face that blended into a crowd, but he could look bored and stolid with very little effort. The waiter was asking the Americans, in uncertain English, what they would like to drink. 

“Got any of that absinthe, pal?” grinned the boisterous one. Lohmann wondered if the lad was joking, or if he thought it was 1898. The waiter got flustered, but suggested pastis instead. 

“No, we just want a drink,” said the tourist. Exchanging a look with the Inspector, Heurtebise turned to the pair and explained: 

“He says there is no absinthe, but they have a... liquorice-flavoured drink, if you wish.” He spoke in French, but the Americans heard him in English, as Lohmann heard him in German. There were some privileges to their line of work, and this was one of them. 

“One of those for my friend, then,” said the boisterous youth, “and a brandy for me.” Heurtebise passed this on to the waiter, who departed.    


Having been spoken to, the American now seemed to consider conversation open. Lohmann hardened his heart and resolved to let his colleague handle the talk, pretending he understood none of it. He gave the tourists a nod and a sleepy smile and turned his attention back to the building he’d been watching; or tried to; the boy with the thousand-yard stare and the wrist-watch kept catching his eye. The unfamiliar clothing made it hard for the Inspector to tell, but he didn’t think the pair were quite old enough to have fought in the last war. Heurtebise continued to exchange pleasantries with the boisterous one as the quiet one mixed the pastis with water from the jug the waiter had brought. 

“Hold on,” his friend asked. “Is it safe for you to be drinking the water? No offense meant,” he added to Heurtebise, “the water’s safe enough, I’m sure, when you live here, but tourist tummy, you know.” 

“The alcohol will make it all right, Bill,” muttered the quiet one. “Don’t be rude.” An embarrassed, slightly hurt look flickered across Bill’s face; it seemed more genuine than than the loud cheerfulness he’d been displaying, and it was gone in a moment. 

* * *

 The silhouette of the Mercedes-Benz rounded the corner; Lohmann excused himself from the table, slipped outside, and a minute later was holding the Benz’s door as the Valkyrie got out. 

“Did you find anything at the Poets’ Cafe?” he asked her. 

“He wasn’t there, but I think he had been,” the Valkyrie murmured. “A lot of the regulars had moonstruck expressions, and the handsome ones all looked slightly put out, like someone had been soaking up the attention that usually went to them.” 

“You know, I think you’re getting more adept at understanding human behaviour off the battlefield.” 

“You think that coffeehouse isn’t one?” 

Lohmann pushed his hat back on his head and grinned. 

“What about her Serene Highness?” 

“Not paying attention to her work, and not our problem right now. What about the house?” 

“No sign of our boy yet. Doubt he’ll come out before sundown, he prefers the glamour of low lights.” As they reached the cafe, he slapped his forehead and added “Poor Heurtebise, I left him talking to some tourists. We may need to rescue him.” 

“Tourists?” 

“I don’t think they’ve anything to do with this business, but there’s something about them -- You’ll see what I mean.” 

Heurtebise stood up from his chair as Lohmann returned with the Valkyrie, and his two new acquaintances followed suit. Bill, for once, had nothing to say, though his expression was eloquent. His friend’s eyes followed the stout man in the dark old-fashioned suit, and the tall, fair woman in the same uniform as the sombre young chauffeur; it was evident that he wondered what on Earth they were doing there together. 

“There a limo-drivers’ convention in town?” Bill finally asked. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> May 20 2018 — made a small change because I rewatched some film clips and realized Lohmann wore spats, not high-button shoes.


	2. Chapter 2

Heurtebise had resumed his driving gloves, and with them, the slightly sinister air he wore when on the job.  
“I must take my leave,” he said to the table, with a shrug that somehow conveyed the likelihood of them all meeting again soon. With the chauffeur departed, Lohmann found himself bearing the brunt of chatting to Bill and his friend (whom he’d finally introduced as Maddox Van Dyne III) while the Valkyrie gazed thoughtfully out the window as if daydreaming. The sun was beginning to dip towards the tops of the buildings.

“I’m sorry your lovely friend doesn’t speak more English,” Bill offered, apparently failing to recall that Lohmann had used the exact same strategy a half-hour earlier when Heurtebise had been present.  
“She’s a maiden of few words in any case.”  
Bill looked as thought he was about to reply, but Maddox interrupted him:  
“Very wise.” He gave his friend another warning glance. Lohmann could have shaken Maddox’s hand in gratitude, but he settled for meeting the boy’s eyes and giving him a slight nod.

Maddox had a face of peculiar geometry, blunt and acute angles all jumbled together with what seemed to be a permanently knitted brow; yet the dominant impression was not unharmonious.  
“What brings you fellows to Paris?” Lohmann asked; while a genuine question, it also seemed a safe one, under the circumstances.  
“Oscar Wilde,” Bill explained, “said that when good Americans die they go to Paris. Not that Maddy and I are dead yet, of course.” He laughed, and Lohmann chuckled, to keep him company. Perhaps the Americans really did think it was 1898.

The Valkyrie tilted her head curiously and favoured them with a distant smile; which froze as she noticed something out the window. Being a goddess, she’d never seen the point of hiding her reactions, and right now she was wearing the expression of a cat that had just spotted a bird. A moment later she was up and out the door. Lohmann sighed.  
“As you can see, my friend has just remembered an appointment we have elsewhere. Until another time.”

He left some money on the table that he hoped would turn into francs by the time the waiter got to it, picked up his hat, and went scrambling after his impetuous colleague, cursing under his breath.

“Who _are_ those two?” Bill asked Maddox, when Lohmann and the Valkyrie had gone.  
“Not who we’re interested in right now,” Maddox replied.

* * *

What the Valkyrie had spotted, of course, was movement across the street. The door she’d watched their quarry shut, early that morning, hadn’t budged, but a tall, slim figure with a too-casual air had crossed the street at the end that led to the broader street and the busier part of the neighbourhood.  
“He must have gone out one of the windows and come around the block,” she explained to Lohmann when he caught up with her, heading to the corner where she’d left the Benz parked. An officer was carefully writing a ticket for the car just behind it. The one just in front already had a ticket on its windshield. Lohmann, who never stopped finding the Benz's selective invisibility amusing, clambered into the passenger seat as the Valkyrie took the wheel and started up the engine. The cop didn’t even look up as they pulled smoothly away.

Their quarry was more attuned to such things, and the Valkyrie took care to follow at a distance, but his height and his beauty (he had cheekbones even sharper than the Valkyrie’s, and slicked hair the colour of a dandelion on a hazy afternoon) made him easy to spot, even as they drew closer to the student quarter and the sidewalks grew more crowded with people out enjoying the summer evening.

If he suspected pursuit he didn’t let on. The young man strolled as if he had nowhere in particular to be, and everywhere was the same to him anyhow. He hummed as if to himself.

“Excuse me,” asked a girl in a mustard-yellow sweater. The youth twinkled down at her. “Is that _Smoke Gets In Your Eyes_?”  
“It is.”  
“You were singing it a bit fast, though,” she continued.  
“That’s how fast they use to sing it when the tune was new, my dear.” He pursed his perfect lips and she seemed not to notice his manners were those of a much older man.

Nearby a boy in square, heavy-framed glasses blinked wistfully at the pair, and two youths who’d been chatting in Berber across their coffees turned their heads with expressions of admiration.

Lohmann almost growled at the sight.  
“Why does everyone always fall for that? There’s wickedness, and then there’s just plain —“ he cast about for a word to convey his disgust with the incubus — “gimcrack.”

The Valkyrie laid a hand on his shoulder.  
“You’re supposed to be the expert in human nature.”  
“But he’s so corny. The same courtship over and over. It’s all he knows how to do.”  
“They only ever see it once.” Her voice was gentler than usual. Lohmann grunted and rubbed his eyes.  
“Promising ‘em sweet nothings,” he muttered.  
“He promises them cruelty, and delivers. They’re romantics, so it works.”

* * *

 “What do you think happens to the soul,” Hofmeister had asked him once, “of someone who dies insane?”

It was just after Lohmann's colleague had arrived in Valhalla; he never spoke of what had brought him there. It was around the time a great many more people than usual were arriving.

_(Such unexpected people — schoolchildren; the woman from downstairs who used to complain of the noise when Lohmann got in late; Muller’s great-nephew who Lohmann had met once and had, frankly, pegged as a bit of a dreamer; a contingent of Russian women who wore battered leather flying helmets and were as fierce as the valkyries who’d brought them in.)_

The two of them were sitting by a hearth in one of the quieter corners, watching sparks lift from the crackling logs and disappear up the chimney. Lohmann pondered Hofmeister’s question for a moment. Finally he replied:  
“Well, look around you. This is heaven for the shell-shocked.”  
“I find that thought strangely comforting.”  
Lohmann leant forward with a grunt and lit a cigar from the fire. When he at last settled back into his spot in the corner he felt Hofmeister’s head slump against his shoulder, and turning, found his colleague had nodded off.  
“Little fool,” he muttered, and gingerly rearranged himself into a posture he could hold without waking the sleeper.

Hofmeister’s hair had grey in it now, he noticed; which, all things considered, ought not to have surprised him. The detective, when they were first reunited, had looked up at him in undisguised puzzlement and asked:  
“Did you get younger?” Lohmann had snorted at the question:  
“ _You_ got older,” he’d said.

Looking down now at the thin figure resting against his shoulder, Lohmann wondered how _he’d_ looked when he’d first arrived. He remembered feeling rather like a boy at a new school until someone had shouted his name from a table nearby; and then he hadn’t really been surprised to see some of his police colleagues beckoning him over. What had amazed him was that the soldiers sitting with them knew him; he couldn’t really believe he’d ever been as young as they still were.

_But then he hadn’t been, had he? Calling everyone “son” and “lad” who was two or three years younger than himself. But it had kept them in line. It had kept them from panicking._

At least, he’d thought, they seemed pleased to see him again.

Hofmeister was fidgeting and grimacing in his sleep. Even here, he had bad dreams sometimes. Lohmann put his arm around him.

”Hush, boy, it’s all right.” It worked, as it always did — Hofmeister snuggled into the crook of the Inspector’s arm and grew quiet.

* * *

 ” _Damn_ all romantics!” The words were out of his mouth before he realized he’d practically shouted them.

“Hear hear!” cried a passing group of students who’d overheard. The Valkyrie quirked one eyebrow as if to ask _Really? Are we going to have this argument here and now?_ but Lohmann pressed on:  
“You _know_ how he works,” he said. “We’ve seen it. He gets into the world through broken places or broken people.”

“Well there are enough of those,” said the Valkyrie.

She didn’t specify whether it was the places or the people she meant.


	3. Chapter 3

The café was crowded enough, Lohmann had argued, that the Incubus wouldn’t notice them if they followed him in; and that anyway it was better to risk being seen than to wait out front and let him escape out a back door. They’d taken a table in a shadowy corner, and the Valkyrie had made it as imperceptible as possible; not even the waiter would spot them. The Inspector, who could still taste the bitter coffee from his previous vigil, rather wished he’d thought to order a drink before the veil descended, but decided it would be churlish to complain now.

Though the sun had dipped, the interior remained somewhat too warm, full as it was of customers. Their chatter flowed around and over the table where the Valkyrie and the Inspector sat. The latter glanced about, trying to decide what made crowds of living people feel so different from the valiant dead to whom he’d become accustomed.

Across from him, the Valkyrie sat half-turned in her seat, eyes locked on her quarry. Even in her sombre driving clothes, she blazed. _She’s behaving more like a Fury_ , he thought. Out loud he said:  
“You look like you feel the same distaste for the bastard as I do.” Turning back to her partner, she contemplated him for a moment; gave one of her short, harsh laughs.  
“He isn’t really an incubus, you know. He isn’t even a ghost. Ghosts need something. He just wants to keep doing what he did in life.”  
“That’s what we’re here to stop.” Lohmann had had a look at the Incubus’ file, and come away grim-faced, but not shocked — he was not easily shocked, just tired of how damned _repetitive_ people were. “The fellow was a scoundrel just like plenty of others,” he added.  
“Only stubborn and cunning enough to slip back to Earth,” the Valkyrie countered, “where his cad’s tricks work all the better for his not having a pulse.” Lohmann scratched his jaw thoughtfully, trying to come up with something encouraging.  
“We’ll beat him with experience, old girl.”

At the other end of the café, the Incubus had gathered quite a little crowd around himself, though his attention was still focussed on the girl in the yellow sweater. Lohmann couldn’t make out what the fellow was saying, but the expressions that flicked across the beautiful face ran thus: jokingly clever, soulful, slyly lustful, suddenly shy and wistful, repeat _da capo_. The warmth of the room and the background murmur of the crowd grew soporific, but the Incubus continued to sparkle at his prey, and his influence continued to splash over the onlookers, each of whom began to feel as though it was meant for them alone.

When, following one quip, he tossed his head with a lopsided grin, even Lohmann, for a moment, found him winsome. The girl in yellow laughed delightedly, and the Inspector shook himself and turned to his partner.  
“He’s in top form tonight,” he said grimly. The Valkyrie shook her head:  
“He’s desperate; overplaying his hand.” Lohmann was about to ask her what made her think so, when the voice of the Incubus, now raised enough to be intelligible over the babble of the crowd, broke in upon them:  
“Solange, my dear, I’d like you to meet two friends of mine.” Lohmann could not help looking up; the Valkyrie gave enough of a start that he automatically gripped her wrist, even though he’d probably catch hell for it afterwards.  
“Not in front of a crowd,” he whispered, then realized she was looking towards the front of the café. Bill and Maddox had entered the room and locked eyes with the Incubus, who was warmly beckoning them over to his table. Now it was the Valkyrie who whispered:  
“Stay put. He hasn’t seen us.”

The two young Americans, Lohmann noticed, also seemed to be urging each other to self-control. Were they here to confront the Incubus as well? As before, if he knew he was hunted, he did not show it — all smiles, he kept his arm around the girl in yellow as he greeted the pair like old friends:  
“Solange, this is Bill Horton and Maddox Van Dyne. I met them during my time at an American college last year. Bill, Maddox, this charming lass is Solange — I’m afraid I didn’t catch your last name, Solange. You see,” he winked at the youths, “Solange and I only just met this evening. Won’t you join us?”  
Maddox, who looked as though he was having to having to restrain Bill from attacking the Incubus then and there, whispered something in his friend’s ear. Lohmann, despite leaning slightly forward across the table, could not make out Bill’s expression from where he sat, but the boy’s shoulders relaxed slightly and he took a seat as Maddox pulled up a fourth chair. The Inspector wondered what Solange was making of all this — she at least he could see clearly, seated beside the Incubus as she was. The girl’s eyes were still fixed on her spellbinding companion, but he thought there was the slightest puzzled furrow between her neat, dark brows. _Not completely under, then._

The Incubus had lowered his voice again, but the expression on his face had taken a turn towards mockery. _Wonder if he’ll be able to hold her and defy them at the same time?_  
This time, it was the Valkyrie who squeezed his arm:  
“Look, he’s slipping.”  
Lohmann squinted at the man who sat at the end of the room with the entourage he’d accumulated over the past hour. Was his illusion of youth wearing thin? There were creases under his jawline that hadn’t been visible before.  
“He does need to feed on someone soon,” he admitted.  
“Wants to, not needs to,” the Valkyrie snapped. “The coward. I can respect someone who fights, but he just... displaces trouble onto others.”

Bill had not really settled in his chair, Lohmann saw, and something the Incubus had said was now causing him to squirm with anger. Maddox laid a hand on his friend’s arm, but their opponent continued smoothly pouring out the words, judging by his expression. _He’s **trying** to provoke them_ , thought Lohmann—

—and at that moment Bill stood up and punched the Incubus in the face.

The reaction of the café patrons was uncharacteristically swift, decisive, and unified — the Incubus must have been working on their sympathies the whole time. The boy in spectacles and one of the Berber youths grabbed the Americans and began dragging them to the door, as a distraught Solange, assisted by several bystanders, sought to examine the stricken Incubus. Lohmann felt an irrational satisfaction at seeing the latter push them away. _Can’t let them take too close a look, can you? Or the whole thing falls down._ Turning to the Valkyrie, as they both stood (startling a passing waiter) he asked:  
“Do we interrupt now?”


	4. Chapter 4

Lohmann covered the distance to the back of the room in three strides and stood looming over the Incubus and his little knot of admirers. The undead criminal looked up and for a moment fear flashed in those eyes. _He really didn’t know we were so close._  
  
“Trouble?” asked the Inspector in his most innocent tone. The Incubus scowled at him, and seemed about to retort when Solange gingerly touched his coarsening cheek:  
“Your poor face! How hard did that boy hit you?” Her tone was solicitous but shocked, and Lohmann guessed she’d just peered through the Incubus’ glamour. Not that that would necessarily break his hold on her. Lohmann was about to privately curse all romantics again, but the girl looked up at him and her expression was calm and serious:  
“Are you a policeman?” she asked, and immediately continued: “You saw what happened — that drunk tourist attacked him. Now if you want to do something useful, I suggest you find a doctor in the neighbourhood, or arrest those two Americans.” _How in Hell had the Incubus managed to pull the wool over this one’s eyes?_ Still, he thought he could see a way out of the situation:  
  
“Why don’t I take your, er, boyfriend to the nearest surgery?” he began. “A doctor can have a look at him, and I can take his witness statement—“ He became aware that the Valkyrie was standing beside him, and that Solange could see her.  
  
Normally Lohmann would have found the Valkyrie’s presence reassuring. He’d worked with her longer than any other colleague he’d ever had; and it’s a useful thing to have a companion as strong as a draught-horse, and invulnerable to any kind of physical harm. At that moment, however, though still in her driver’s uniform, she held a gleaming sword; which, he thought, might be taking interruption a bit too far.

The Incubus had also taken stock of the Valkyrie’s sword, which shone like no earthly weapon; or at least not like any earthly weapon with a blade. With a thin-lipped smile, he tilted his head and shouted:  
“ _Fire! Bomb! Fire!”_

All at once the crowd seemed to be one thick, liquid mass, trying to squeeze its way out through the single front door of the café. It was a good thing the place wasn’t really in flame; as it was several people were lucky to still be breathing. _Well that’s one difference with the living,_ Lohmann realized. _They still have something to lose._

He could see by Solange’s expression that doubt was building in the girl’s mind as the inconsistencies piled up; but the Incubus threw an arm about her and hustled her away before she could resist. He struggled to follow them, but even half-in-the-world as he was, it was all he could do not to be carried away by the current of the mob, and he found himself being pushed and pulled towards the front of the building.

He could no longer see the Valkyrie, and hoped she’d made herself scarce upon realizing she was the cause of the crowd’s panic. He wondered what she must look like to the unwounded — beautiful, yes, but not consoling. Yet Bill and Maddox had been unafraid. Bill and Maddox — were they still out front?

Lohmann squeezed through the front door along with a tangle of other people, shook himself, and looked up and down the street. Most of the crowd who’d fled the café hadn’t fled very far. Indeed, once outside, the mood turned cheerful and curious, with bystanders chatting and speculating on when the fire brigade would turn up. The Inspector couldn’t see either of the American youths, but a young fellow in glasses looked familiar. He ambled over to him.  
  
“Your friend who was attacked, and the girl? I didn’t see them get out.” The bespectacled boy gave him a suspicious look, so he tried a different tactic:  
“Who were those louts who started the trouble anyway? Ruined my night out, I can say that. And I had such a pretty woman sharing my table.” The youth shrugged.  
“Didn’t know them myself, officer. I was chatting with the fellow — he’s awfully fun — and these two Americans came up, claimed to know him. I suppose they did, really, because he greeted them in a friendly way, and he had been telling us about his travels there last year — and then they said something about him ruining a friend of theirs and the short one punched him in the face. Some African students came to his rescue before I could move and that’s when you showed up. I expect the Americans were just jealous of some success he’d had with girls they fancied, or something.” He looked about. “Afraid I don’t know which way they went, though. I’d like to give’em a piece of my mind myself.” He looked puzzled for a moment and asked: “But who was that lady with the torch or the bomb or whatever it was?”  
“A confederate of theirs, no doubt,” said Lohmann hastily. “Well, thank you for your help. My advice to you is to catch up with your friends and go to a different café, if the tall fellow is feeling up to it, or take him to a doctor, if he isn’t.”

The young man nodded and seemed to consider this. With a cheery wave, the Inspector stepped away and mingled with the crowd, who were watching the café not burn, and debating whether or not it was safe to go back in, at least long enough to retrieve their drinks.

Lohmann watched the youth’s reflection in the café window for a few minutes, but the lad seemed genuinely unsure which way to go. He probably didn’t know, after all, where the Incubus might have taken Solange. It had been a long shot. Lohmann eyed the crowd’s reflection for the two Berbers, but they were nowhere to be seen. He hoped they weren’t still fighting with Bill and Maddox somewhere.


	5. Chapter 5

_When in doubt, go find where she parked the car._ Lohmann set off down the street, grumpily looking for the Benz in the crowd and the dimming light. He hoped the Valkyrie would be waiting – after seventeen years they ought to have had the concept of regrouping down pat, but she’d been acting very odd the past hour. 

By the time he found the Benz, he was downright annoyed with his partner, but at the sight of the Valkyrie leaning against the car with a worried frown and a cigarette burning down between her fingers, the anger went while out of him. It was replaced with curiosity.

“Picking up my bad habits?” he asked. He took out his cigar case. “Expect you can spare me a light, then.”

She took the cigar from him, lit it from the tip of her cigarette, and handed it back. He leant against the car beside her, and they smoked in silence for a while. When hers was little more than a smouldering nub between her index and second fingers, she dropped it to the pavement, ground it under her Cuban-style heel, and said:

“I acted rashly in there, little brother.” Lohmann whistled.

“You never call me that unless you’re really upset. What’s got your dander up?” The Valkyrie fell silent again. This, too, was not as comfortable as their silences usually were.

“He almost had you, you know,” she finally said.

“No he didn’t.”

“You were starting to get that same moon-struck look as the rest of them.” He gave her a sideways glance which she did not return.

“It didn’t take. It won’t happen again.”

“Sometimes I forget you’re human.” Lohmann had to laugh at that, and did so, so uproariously that the Valkyrie finally turned to look at him.

“I — I don’t know whether to take that as compliment or insult,” he said, when he’d recovered enough to composure to address her. “Anyway,” he added,“that slip of a girl he’s trying to make time with isn’t completely under, I’d bet my soul on it. And if a kid her age can resist, he won’t get me.” This time his partner laughed:

“As if you’re any older than her.” The Inspector raised an eyebrow.

“I was forty years alive, plus the past seventeen. That may not seem much to you, but believe me, it’s a long time on a human. If I weren’t dead, I’d be starting to think about retirement right now.” To his surprise her face turned serious again:

“Do you?”

“I said, ‘if I weren’t dead.’” He took another puff on his cigar. “Who am I kidding, I was married to the job. I’d have kept on till they had to carry me out of the station.”

“They _did_ have to.” With his assurance that he had no intention of quitting, she seemed to have relaxed, and a startling thought came to him:

“Don’t say you were worried about me, in the café.”

“Like I said, I forget sometimes you’re human. I’ve got so used to you that I get shocked at any sign of weakness.”

“Sign of weakness —“ Lohmann growled, before breaking off: “What we’ve got to do is catch this fellow. That’ll stop any ‘weakness’ in its tracks.”

Privately, the Inspector was as shocked at his colleague’s fears as she was at any frailty he might have shown (not that he was prepared to admit he actually had). _I hope my habits aren’t really rubbing off on her,_ he thought. _She’d be a terrible human._ Out loud he asked:

“Did you happen to see if there was a back way out of the café, when that tidal wave of customers you spooked was pushing me towards the front entrance?” Unexpectedly, the Valkyrie grinned:

“No back door, at least none that will open. I took a raven’s-eye look around the building once I scarpered.” Lohmann thought about this.

“He and Solange are still somewhere in there, then.”

“If you didn’t spot them at the front, it seems the best bet.”

“And moreover, the authorities are bound to shut the place down as a fire trap when they take a look at it and see there’s only one exit.” Indeed, the sounds of a heated argument were coming from down the street as he spoke. He glanced towards the café and saw uniforms, and a man he guessed was the owner of the establishment shouting at them.

“At the very least, it will take a day or so for him to pass a bribe to someone,” mused the Valkyrie. “Plenty of time for the Incubus to reestablish his hold over Solange.”

“Unless someone breaks in and interrupts.” Until she was ensorcelled again, the Incubus could draw no benefit from harming the girl. Lohmann figured Solange was reasonably safe for a couple of hours, longer if her captor waited for the crowd to disperse before resuming his wiles; but the sooner they could get into the building, the better. The matter, however, was evidently in the hands of the firefighters for the moment.

Even tobacco was little comfort to the two agents as they waited, first for the doors to be padlocked, then for the crowd to move on, and finally for the street to grow quiet as the night deepened. They might be able to elude the glances of passers-by, but breaking a lock was liable to draw the attention of even the most jaded Parisian.

* * *

The café was now dark, the chairs all standing where they’d been left or in some cases tipped over by customers in their haste to exit. Lohmann rummaged in his pockets for a torch, and listened intently for any sounds within the building.

It took all of ten minutes to find the Incubus, crooning over the unconscious Solange on the second floor landing of the café‘s back staircase. He’d dropped all his glamour by now, and looked older by at least a quarter-century.

“Let us alone!” he wailed at the two agents. “Why can’t you leave us in peace?”

“That’s rich. You’re not exactly leaving her alone; she’s in more danger from you than you are from us.”

“No, I swear. She’s different ---”

“You say that every time,” the Valkyrie interrupted coldly. “Every time.”

“What do _you_ know of love? You were never human. And you, Inspector, you’re pretty spry for a dead man.”

“Even if my colleague and I believed that you actually loved that girl,” said Lohmann, “it’s no good, you know, hanging over the living. She would catch her death of you. Take the word of a dead man, if you’re determined to harp on my mortality.”

The Incubus looked up at Lohmann with tired, dull eyes.

“Yet you walk about in a warm body. Can’t you spare the slightest pity, you who are a soul in bliss, while I am bound upon a wheel of—”

“Stop trying to use Shakespeare against my colleague—” interrupted the Valkyrie. The Incubus laid a clawlike hand on Solange’s throat, and both the goddess and the inspector tensed and froze. Triumphant, the wretched figure before them continued with his speech:

“Hypocrites. Neither of you know what it is to be lonely — to have this yawning abyss inside me!”

“Oh hell, you’re not even an abyss!” Lohmann, who did not look like most people’s idea of a soul in bliss, could not forbear barking: “You’re a bare, dusty cupboard, scarce six inches deep! At least an abyss might have something in it!”

He fell silent, taking in the nature of the standoff.


	6. Chapter 6

Lohmann could hear his pocket watch ticking away as he and the Valkyrie faced their quarry in the stairwell. The Incubus’ eyes were opal and his lower jaw was becoming curiously liquid, but the sharp-nailed finger was still poised over Solange’s throat.

“Harming the girl while she’s unconscious won’t do you any good, you know,” said the Inspector quietly. “Right now she can’t feel a thing.”

“You forrrrshed me to change plansh,” slurred the Incubus. “Now she’s my hoshtage.”

Lohmann could feel the watch’s ticking now, like a heartbeat on the wrong side of his body.

* * *

In old wives’ tales, there comes a moment when the revelry of the unquiet dead is at its height, the infernal powers appear to be triumphant — and then a cock crows. Never mind if the dawn is hours away; the _idea_ of the sun has been thrown into the midst of their orgy, and they must halt and give way.

The sound that broke the Incubus’ spell was not a cock’s crow. It was Bill’s voice, one-semi-tone flat, gasping out as he and Maddox came climbing up along the bannister of the spiral staircase:

_I’d do anything for you_

_Anything you want me to_

_All I want is kissing you_ —

Maddox reached a wiry arm through the balusters and grabbed at the shoulder of the Incubus, who rounded on the two young Americans, distracted in his anger, his jaw falling open at an impossible-looking angle. Bill was already over the bannister and onto the landing.

Lohmann lunged forward and caught Solange as she toppled forward from her captor’s arms. Glancing towards the Valkyrie, who he expected to see already charging past him, the Inspector found her watching Bill and Maddox with understanding dawning on her face.

“This battle is theirs, I think.”

“Then we must be here for... afterwards?” Lohmann asked, checking Solange's pulse. He’d never yet had the duty of claiming the fallen.

“Not me. You are. I’m not good at dealing with the living. Not when I can’t just take them away from all this.” Lohman's eyes widened.

“Those kids are going to win?” He couldn’t entirely keep the surprise out of his voice.

“See for yourself.” Indeed, though the incubus had doubled in strength since dropping his glamour, Bill and Maddox were proving a match for him.

“They’re brave ones, those lads.” Heurtebise was leaning casually against a nearby wall, his arms folded.

“You brought them here?” Lohmann asked. The chauffeur shrugged.

“They’d have tracked him down sooner or later; I just gave them a lift. It’s my job, after all.”

Maddox had the Incubus backed into a corner now, holding him at bay with a small bright object; Lohmann, recognizing it as a woman’s folding pocket mirror, realized what it was the boy was trying to do. But—

“The two of them aren’t enough to surround him. Come on, before he tries to flee up the stairs!”

Solange had come out of her trance by now and, after a wild glance up at the Inspector, was standing albeit somewhat unsteadily on her own two feet and shouting curses at the Incubus. _More spirit than most people would have shown,_ Lohmann thought, _but not the best strategy either._  

“Have you got a mirror?” he asked her. “He hates ‘em.” Grabbing up her dropped purse from the floor, the girl fished hastily through it, pulling out a compact just as the seething Incubus spun round and took a swing at her.

The blow was blocked; and by the flat of a blade — the Valkyrie had drawn her sword again.

Solange gave her one look of open-mouthed astonishment, then seized her opportunity and raised the mirror at the Incubus as Maddox and Bill were doing. The three young mortals tightened their formation around the entity, Bill grimacing at the sight of their antagonist's swaying jaws. Outside the triangle, Lohmann, the Valkyrie and Heurtebise formed a second barrier.

Very suddenly, the Incubus was gone, with a popping inrush of air. 

“Shut the mirrors!” Maddox cried, snapping his compact. “He’s gone into one of them!” Bill followed suit, and once Heurtebise had reiterated the words in French, so did Solange.

“Get the strongbox, Bill.” Maddox was wrapping a sticking-plaster around his mirror; when it was sealed to his liking, he beckoned Solange over and did the same to hers. Bill came forward clutching his mirror in one hand with a small metal box tucked in his other arm. His friend took the mirror from him gingerly, and repeated the operation with the sticking-plaster. “Do you think dropping it in the Seine will be enough to hold him?” Maddox asked, when the three mirrors were locked in the strongbox.

“I think we can do better than that,” Heurtebise said gently, holding out his hands. Maddox looked down at the sealed box he was holding, and moved to hand it over.

“Wait,” said Bill. He took the box and cradling it in one arm, pounded with his fist on the lid. It rang dully. “That’s for Nathan!” he shouted at the box. He thudded the box again: “and that’s for Joan! And that—“ he was in tears now as he struck the metal box— “that’s for anyone else you’ve destroyed!”

Maddox took the box from his friend and shoved it at Heurtebise.

“Take him,” he said. “Please,” he added.

The chauffeur, and agent of the Otherworld, accepted the box with a grave bow. Beside him, Lohmann murmured:

“Look to your friend, lad.” Maddox turned to the sobbing Bill and gently took his hand.

“You’ve gone and made your knuckles bleed, and I’m almost out of Band-Aids.”

* * *

 “Could someone tell me what all this is about?” asked Solange, calm now, and looking at the Valkyrie, who took her aside to talk. Heurtebise soon joined them, leaving Lohmann with the two Americans.

Maddox looked at the Inspector, gestured at the box in Heurtebise’s hands, and said:

“That one was some kind of vampire, wasn’t he? Bill and I have seen that for ourselves. And the chauffeurs are, I don’t know, angels or something. But who are you? If you don’t mind my saying, you just look like a regular guy.”

“I’m with _her_ ,” Lohmann smiled, removing his bowler hat and nodding towards the Valkyrie as he settled himself on the stairs. “But I’m more ghost than angel.” He glanced down at his thick middle: “Though perhaps ghost isn’t the right description either. I _was_ a police detective.”

The expression that crossed Maddox’s face suggested he was struggling to take in the implications of all this; but he squeezed in beside the Inspector anyway, and Bill soon took the step below them.

“What happened to those fellows who threw you out of the café?” Lohmann asked.

“Luckily, they seemed to forget their beef with us as soon as we were out the door. Broke away from the influence once they were out in the fresh air, I guess. Still, it would have been an awkward conversation to have, and we didn’t want to make’em upset again, so Maddy and I ran as soon as we had the chance.” 

“Very sensible." He paused. "Do you boys want to tell me about Nathan and Joan, then?” Bill, who’d been regaining his cheery demeanour, bit his lip, and Maddox laid a hand on his friend’s shoulder.

“Not all that much to tell,” he said. “You’ve seen what — _that_ one — does to people. We met him at college back in the States— he was calling himself Robert Grundeis then, and posing as a student. Nathan, Bill and I were in his circle. I’d like to tell you Bill and I were strong enough to resist his charm, but I think it was just luck of the draw that he’d picked Nathan to sway first.”

Lohmann regarded the two thoughtfully:

“He chooses the lonely,” he said. “It’s harder for him to break up a strong friendship...” Bill nodded.

“Nathan and Joan were having difficulties before he showed up. Perhaps if—“

“That was no one’s fault,” Maddox said hastily. “Sometimes people just aren’t meant to be together; and sometimes they are, but things are... complicated.”

“Did the Incubus — that is, Robert — move on Joan, then, after he’d done with Nathan?” Lohmann asked.

“Oh he never touched _Joan,”_  said Bill. “But losing Nathan— well, it destroyed her. She tried to— anyway, her family’s put her in a private hospital upstate.”

“She’s alive, though?” The inspector raised an eyebrow.

“Who’s alive?” Solange had come back over. The Inspector repeated to the young Frenchwoman what Bill and Maddox had told him, with additional details from the two Americans as she asked further questions.

“But you can’t leave her there,” she urged them. “You’ve stopped that monster, avenged your friend and saved me. Now you must help your other friend.”

“She’s right,“ said the Valkyrie. “Your fight isn’t over yet.” 

Bill looked embarrassed. 

“Maddox and I weren’t really expecting to live through this,” he admitted. “We only bought one-way tickets here. Our families think we’re working on an archeological dig in Mexico.”

Lohmann’s jaw dropped, showing the worst of his crooked teeth, but he didn’t care:

“You two," he snapped, "are getting in the car, _now_.” He heaved himself to his feet and glared at the Valkyrie: “We are not letting these boys gallivant around Paris without their families’ knowledge for a moment longer. Heurtebise, you can get the girl home safely, I trust?”

As the three young mortals protested in various languages, the Inspector jammed his hat down on his head and tried to ignore the Valkyrie’s smirk of fond amusement.

“And once you kids are back on your native soil with no further risk to life or limb,” he scolded Maddox, who he’d decided was the more intelligent of the pair, and therefore more to blame for this harebrained scheme, “You are going to— wherever you said that sanitarium is, and you are going to see if this Joan is being treated all right, and if she isn’t—" he paused and looked around at them all, suddenly unsure of what to say.


	7. Chapter 7

_Our dear Solange_

_We hope thou art well. Every apology for our bad French, Maddox labored with a dictionary but this letter is assuredly full of faults. After our strange friends conducted us back to America, we had obtained permission to visit Joan. We know not when she can go home but she appeared happy to see us. We didn’t know if to talk about events in Paris, but she asked and we assured her the monster is gone..._

* * *

Outside the Beacon Falls Sanitarium, the Inspector and the Valkyrie stood next to the Benz, waiting and smoking “like taxi drivers,” the Inspector complained.

“It was your suggestion we give the boys a lift,” the Valkyrie countered; “and anyway, I was the one who did all the driving.” Lohmann made a non-committal sound and squinted (for the day was very sunny) at the road leading up to the hospital grounds. The only pictures of America he could remember seeing had been of New York, Chicago, or the West; this bit of the country, except for the farmhouses built in a different style, looked more like Bavaria.

The Valkyrie glanced towards the trunk of the Benz where the strongbox, with the Incubus sealed inside, had been locked ever since Heurtebise, his assistance completed, had quietly handed it over to Lohmann and herself.

She’d not been entirely truthful when she said she sometimes forgot her partner was human. He was quite plainly the soul she’d first noticed at Amiens, wrapped in the memory of a body and walking the world of the living when required, warm and breathing and wearing those outmoded clothes. He was certainly uninfluenced now, by the Incubus or anyone else; but he seemed less sure of himself than usual. Then again, nothing about this case had gone in the usual way.

The Valkyrie was not quite herself, for that matter — under ordinary circumstances she might have agreed to a detour before returning the prisoner to their Department, so that two mortals who were nowhere near death might resolve some business; but she would not have let them stop for breakfast once they got to America.

Of course it _had_ been a pretty long night.

* * *

The restaurant had been built into an old railway car drawn up by the side of the highway, and even at that hour it had been full of travellers. Lohmann had given a very suspicious look to the slice of apple pie a la mode placed in front of him, and had pursed his lips as though trying to come up with the correct word for it.

“Why,” he’d finally asked Maddox, “would any cook place an ice cream on top of a warm pastry? It will melt.”

“Not if you eat it fast,” Bill had said.

“What if I don’t wish to be hurried?”

“Welcome to America.”

* * *

The boys had already spoken to Joan’s parents, of course, or they would hardly have been allowed to visit at all— fortunately, Maddox was a cousin of her family. No wonder Lohmann felt as though they were running a taxi service; there had been so many people to meet with and permissions to acquire. The Valkyrie could tell he’d been secretly enjoying it, even though he couldn’t speak to anyone himself — the rules he would have broken if he had! Not to mention the spanners he’d have thrown into the works of living society.

Now that they were outside the hospital, however, her colleague could only fidget with his cigar-holder and grimace at the trees that ornamented the grounds. Worried about the boys, or was it the setting that troubled him?

“Not much like the hospital I collected you from,” she observed.

“No, well, I didn’t die in a loony bin,” he muttered. “Much less a fancy one.”

“I would have thought you’d have more sympathy for Joan.”

“I do. Even the best of these places is hardly someplace to spend a holiday.” He glowered at the ground-floor windows and the Valkyrie remembered:

“How is your friend doing these days?” The Inspector halted his fidgeting:

“Hoffmeister? He can sleep at night now. So he tells me.” She suspected he was daring her to continue with this line of questioning, and pressed on:

“He was in a place like this for a while, wasn’t he?”

“Well, the director turned out to be the very criminal whose men had driven Hoffmeister mad, but yes, other than that it was ‘ _a place like this._ ’” He stared down at the flower beds in front of them.

“Hoffmeister recovered, though,” the Valkyrie persisted. She finished her cigarette and linked her arm through his.

“But it took _years_. Those kids only have one lifetime to work on it.”

The silence that followed was companionable, if not comfortable.

After a while Maddox and Bill came out of the building, their faces grave but calm. The Valkyrie spoke first:

“How is she?”

“She’s well, not all right, but they haven’t… operated on her or anything,” said Maddox. “She says they’ve tried shock treatment, though, and that now they’re using some kind of sedative. It’s a new one that doesn’t make patients as sleepy. Mill-something? She seemed clear enough, anyway, and she recognized us.” At the words “recognized us,” the Valkyrie noticed, Lohmann looked relieved; but the Inspector said nothing.

“Mostly it sounds like they just try to talk to her,” Bill added. “Except of course they don’t believe her when she tells them anything about Robert — about the Incubus, I mean — and Nathan. She knows _we_ believe her, of course. Maybe that’ll help.”

“Also we were able to tell her the Incubus is gone now,” said Maddox. “We may have mentioned you and the others. But we told her to keep mum about that part — and to play along with the doctors when they say it’s all neurosis because she feels guilty about Nathan.”

“Her parents are going to want a full report,” Bill said. “I don’t know whether we ought to tell them that the shock treatment isn’t working, and that she’d be better off at home; or that she’s recovering nicely, and they ought to bring her home. Which are they more likely to listen to, Maddy?”

Maddox pinched the bridge of his nose.

“Let me think about it. Damn, it was much easier fighting a vampire than convincing people to do the right thing.” The Valkyrie had been about to interject that the Incubus wasn’t exactly a vampire, either, but decided to let the point stand.

“Well,” she asked, with a glance at her colleague, “where to now?”

“Just into town.” Maddox ruffled his hair nervously. “It’s all right, Miss — er, Ma’am. You and the Inspector have done a lot for us already, and we don’t want to get you in trouble with your... employers. Bill and I decided in there to stay in the area for a while, keep an eye on things. I know Aunt Maeve, we’ll likely need to send a few reports back before we overcome her inertia. This is going to be a long campaign.”

Lohmann nodded. He was quiet on the drive into the little town; shook Bill and Maddox’s hands when they made their goodbyes; and tried not to grin in amusement at their blushes when the Valkyrie kissed each of them on the cheek. He could not forbear glancing in the rear-view mirror as the Benz pulled away.

“Will they be all right?” he asked. “Will the girl be all right?” The Valkyrie was capable of shrugging without taking her hands off the steering wheel. She did so now.

“I’m a Valkyrie, not a Norn.” She began the turn that led onto the highway. “They have each other, which is something to be going on with.”

Lohmann watched the trees gather along the sides of the road as they put the town — a village, really — behind them. The road was bumpy, and he smiled, a bit grimly, at the thought of the Incubus being shaken in his metal box every time the Benz hit a pebble.

“Did it really look like the Incubus had me under his spell, back in Paris?” he finally asked, surprised as he spoke to realize that yes, that question had been nagging at the back of his mind.

“Little brother, he was peeling you like an onion. It’s lucky for you that you are just as tough as those youngsters.”

That, Lohmann supposed, was as much of an answer — to anything — as he was going to get for the time being. He leant back in his seat and closed his eyes:

“Wake me when we’re close to home.”

Despite the bumps, he slept all the way.


End file.
